A law of secret influence

Our opinion: The law that created JCOPE needs fixing to ensure maximum disclosure of the money behind lobbying.

It is a fundamental principle of open government that citizens have a right to know who is trying to influence those who govern them. And because money is a mighty powerful influence, it follows that the public has the right to know who’s footing the bill for that influence.

That’s why the debate in the Joint Commission on Public Ethics over granting some groups waivers of disclosure rules is so troubling. But don’t blame JCOPE alone for this. Blame the state Legislature, which wrote the law that allows — even requires — this assault on transparency.

The 2011 law that created JCOPE requires registered lobbyists who lobby on their own behalf to report the names of donors of $5,000 or more. The law, however, also allows them to seek an exemption from disclosure if it “may cause harm, threats, harassment, or reprisals to the source of funding or its property.”

The law also exempts 501(c)(4) non-profits if their primary activities raise similar concerns. The legislation effectively carved out whole areas for likely exemptions: lobbyists on such issues as civil rights and civil liberties, abortion rights, family planning, discrimination or persecution based upon race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or religion, immigrant rights, and the rights of certain criminal defendants. All these “are expected” to be covered by such an exemption.

So any JCOPE commissioners who are inclined to defend transparency can only go so far. What’s really needed is for the Legislature to pull back the cloak of secrecy that it draped over people and groups that lobby on some of the most controversial issues in the public arena.

Already, the commission last year granted a waiver to the New York arm of NARAL, an abortion rights group. Two similar groups, Family Planning Advocates of New York State and the New York Women’s Equality Coalition, have also asked for the exemption. So have the liberal New York Civil Liberties Union and the conservative New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. The four new applicants have been rejected.

We’re not oblivious to the violence that has historically been committed against abortion and civil rights advocates. But to suggest that an issue is so hot that the people on one side or the other should be allowed to influence government anonymously should offend anyone — liberal, conservative, or moderate — who believes in open government and in law and order. Government cannot go opaque just because of a few crazed extremists and heated rhetoric. Not in this country.

And while the Legislature is on the topic, the current threshold for disclosure — $5,000 — is far too high. State election law requires that people who contribute $100 or more to a politician be identified; why should there be any less scrutiny of the money that goes into influencing politicians once they become public officials and have real power?

As the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, money is speech. That’s what donor disclosure is about: Who lawmakers are listening to, whether they’re talking with their mouths, or their checkbooks.